Not that this isn’t really wrong — but if you have to steal something this is a cool way to do it I guess …
Drop in off a rope, hide from the motion detectors and security cameras. Only problem — gotta be an inside job.

Microsoft, who have been known to patent tiny and sometimes seemingly obvious things (timed mouse clicks for example) while riding on the shoulders of giants who often gave their truly revolutionary discoveries unencumbered by patents, has been bitten by the spurious software patent issue themselves. Microsoft Word it’s been ruled, is in breach of somebody else’s software patent (related to XML tagging). Better yet, an injunction forcing them to stop the sale of such infringing products has been granted also (Word and Vista). This has led to speculation that there may be something to the theory of Karma after all and that what goes around really might come around.

Sadly Microsoft has way too much money for this to make much of an impact on them. They’ll most likely pay the fine (290m), perhaps create a workaround and carry on business as usual. But still, the more money they have to hand out in the US, the EU and anywhere else that dislikes their practices, the more likely that at some point in the future, the board will realize that their version of business as usual isn’t really all that profitable anymore. Read more at Reuters.

This story was interesting. The US Department of Justice sets up phishing site apparently to test workers and see if they are practicing safe computing. Of course it was catch and release — no real data was released to the outside world, but I bet any employee who made the mistake of clicking through will regret having done so. Not a bad I idea I suppose, but if their system were set up correctly, their users shouldn’t be able to go phishing no matter what they do, should they?

More and more I see stories where criminals are caught by technology. Two that really struck my funny bone this past week are the guy in Columbus, Ohio, who sent text messages to his stolen cell phone thereby luring the thief to come on down and meet the police instead of the girls and drugs promised in the messages. The other one I enjoyed was a thief who took pictures on a cell phone, unaware that the phone was also uploading his images to the real owner’s server. Should help with the identification of course and in this case the police recognized the thief. (I think this is a story from last summer). I have heard many more stories of phones being located, cars being located, etc. Maybe people should earn things the old fashioned way once again and then they’ll have nothing to worry about.

It seems that not all of the users of Firefox 3 were previous users of Firefox 2 upgrading to the newer version. Prior to the release of Firefox 3, the Mozilla browser had roughly 48% of our browser marketshare, making it the clear leader. Post Firefox 3 release, our Mozilla Firefox usage is up to nearly 65%. It remains to be seen how this trend shows up on other sites but it’s looking good for Firefox to make up some significant ground overall. We’ll know more not long after the end of July.

After complaints alleged to have been filed by several states attorneys general, parents have now sued MySpace.com in Los Angeles. One of the persons interviews basically says suing MySpace over your minor child meeting a sexual predator on-line is a little like suing the phone company becuase your child talked to someone undesirable. Ultimately it would seem to me that much of the responsibility should fall with the parent. While I don’t know the particulars of this case, and thus decline to comment on it specifically, it would appear that this suit is over-reaching. You can find out more about the particulars at many sites such as this one that gives more particular details about the claims made in these cases.

If your child has access to the internet, you need to have the “don’t ever meet a stranger talk” with them. Just because you talk to someone doesn’t change their status and that is the lure or misconception I think many of us suffer from … that discussion results in someone becoming a friend.

Geez have I read that enough lately? Today just one email address had 12 of this particular header subject sneak through the spam filters. I haven’t looked into it, but I assure you that you are unlikely to download Vista Ultimate as it is a huge download. Instead, you’ll undoubtely get a nice virus.